Don't Look Back
by Auditory Eden
Summary: Well, she did anyway. Why did Haku tell her not to look back? Chihiro/OC, Chihiro/Haku


Author: Auditory Eden

Rating: T

Warnings: Character death and angst

Notes: I just love to kill her off, don't I?

Don't Look Back

_Don't look beck until you've gotten through the tunnel...._His words were sharp in her mind. _Keep going._

_But is he still there? Was it all still there? _She felt her eyes slide sideways, her head begin to turn. She fought her own impulse, but the impulse won. Her head rotated, til she was looking almost straight back.

Nothing happened.

Haku—all of it—was out of sight over the hill. A small sigh escaped her lips. She shut her eyes for a fraction of a second, blinking back errant tears.

"Chihiro-chan! Come on!"

She turned, her sneakers kicking up dust around her spindly ankles, and ran up to her mother. "Ne, Kaa-san, do you think the movers are at our house yet?"

"I'm sure they are, dear..."

xXx

Yubaba watched in her scrying glass as Chihiro turned back to face her parents after a brief look over her shoulder. The memory spell wouldn't work, she knew. Not now that Chihiro had looked into the Spirit World as the spell began to block her memories. Of course, if it had been just a second earlier or later, the charm would have it's effect, but at that precise moment, it was just beginning the process. _Troublesome child, choosing the worst moment possible for her reminiscence...._ And she'd expressly disobeyed Haku as well. _Or rather, ignored his request. _

"Yubaba." She turned to her wayward (soon to be former) apprentice, and felt a wave of pity, mixed with some affection. The boy was defiant, and that was amusing. He was young, he didn't know yet of love and the emotions that accompanied it, nor of separation from his love. He had not yet lived. And yet he tried so hard to break his bonds.

"Haku, she looked." These words are spoken coldly, but she felt another stab of remorse; the shock on his face, the way it crumples with grief. Now he has begun to learn. Such is betrayal.

"So...will she remember, or no?"

"She will. One seconds difference, and it would have held, but as she is...." His face crumples some more. She knows that this boy didn't want for his little human girlfriend to remember the Spirit Realm, simply because he didn't want her to be pained. People who spoke about spirits were locked away these days, not hailed as prophets.

She placed a hand on his shoulder, and Lin, whom she called previously, in anticipation of this, guides him to his room. He was, after all, still recovering from Zeniba's spell.

xXx

Chihiro had learned early on, _do not talk about the spirits._ She pretended not to notice the guardians of various things here and there, although once or twice, in the first few days, she'd accidentally spoken with one. Her memories of the Spirit World had brought her strength after the initial move, her train of thought being, _if I could make it in the Spirit World, I can make it in the real world. _Haku's promise had sustained her for many years, as well.

As she grew older, twelve, fifteen, seventeen, she realized that Haku had likely only promised as such to placate a young girl, and with no real intent or belief in it's fulfillment. He had lied, but perhaps he had done so with good reason. Would she have left if he hadn't?

At twenty she was becoming cynical. Perhaps the whole thing had been a strange dream. But then she'd think of caring for the sick Haku, and the memory of his soft hair, his chapped skin, the heat of his fever—and it was all just too real...She would know that it was no dream...

By twenty-five, she was beginning to move on. Fresh out of university, she was working as a librarian over summer break before the beginning of second term, when she would take over for a history teacher who'd quit for family reasons. One of her co-workers, a self-confident twenty-seven-year-old, liked to flirt with her voraciously...He was, she had to admit, pretty nice. And handsome, too.

At thirty-two, she had married. He was the first man she'd ever really dated, too hung up on Haku to go out with boys on more than one date in high school and university. Mamoru was kind, but sometimes sarcastic, and always funny, although she had figured out that sometimes his jokes would be at her expense. The Spirit World was something she didn't really think about much any more...

At thirty-eight, Chihiro became the mother of a beautiful little girl with brown hair and eyes, whom she decided to name Lin. Lin was sweet and adorable, and Chihiro knew they were spoiling her, but she figured that when there next child was born, it would all even out.

At the age of forty, her son was born. They named him Hiro, after his father's father, and he was a cheerful little boy. Lin, two years older, was grumpy about the loss of her spotlight, but doted on her little brother anyway.

At forty three, Chihiro, eight months, three weeks pregnant with her and Mamoru's third child, took a small trip to the tunnel, where the entrance to the Spirit World had been. She walked through the arch, and stood just beyond it, looking with a slightly desolate feeling at the scrubby woods that covered where the fields had been.

When she got home that night, contractions had begun to wrack her body. Her husband rushed her to the hospital, but they assumed it was just time. Both Hiro and Lin had been a bit premature as well.

The pain with this delivery was sharper. And beyond that, the baby wasn't moving out and down like it should. She dimly heard the doctor mutter the words "complications" and "hemorrhaging" to Mamoru. Then fire had ripped through her body. She had screamed, her throat raw and sore, screams filling her mind and her body. Finally, after so much pain, she couldn't count the minutes, the worst was gone. Through teared eyes, she saw them taking a tiny pink body from the room. She turned her head minutely, facing her husband.

"Well..." she croaked, her voice still sore from the screams.

He stroked her face. "There were twins. Girls. One, they're taking to be cleaned up, and their going to put her on oxygen for a few hours. The other...she died during the birth, they said." He kissed her forehead. "Are you okay?"

"What does our little girl look like?" she asked. He smiled crookedly. "She...they both have black hair, and these deep green eyes, like nothing I've every seen before. Forrest green, I think you'd call them."

Forrest green. Haku's eyes...She feels her breathing start to slow, and her head grows fuzzy. "Mamoru...my little girl is waiting for me..." she whispered. His light eyes widen in shock.

"Chihiro, no!" but the black is already creeping across her vision.

"Can we name...her...name her....Sen?" her breath faded completely as she fell limp.

xXx

Haku felt warm wind against his scales. Flying in the summertime was freeing. The air was sweet, the scents of flowers mingling with the humidity to form a light scent...He looked below him, and saw a woman, probably in her late twenties, by the look of her, with a little girl with black hair. The girl looked up and pointed to him. He vaguely hears her calls of, "Kaa-san, it's a dragon!"

The woman looked up and her eyes widened. That dragon is a dragon she would know anywhere. She breathed out, "Haku...."

Above, he circled a bit uncertainly, then spiraled down to earth. Perhaps they needed assistance.

The dragon, to her surprise, and a bit to her consternation, began to descend, curling downwards. He landed, then in a soft flicker, a trick of light, a man with long green hair and pale skin stood before them, some hundred yards distant.

Haku took a step towards them, then noticed that one of the pair, the mother, was exhibiting signs of distrust. Her whole body was tense, and she reached out for her daughter. He called out, "Are you all right?"

Her heart leaped at his voice. This man was Haku, alright, only more so. He was Haku at the age he'd always been mentally. "N—Um, yes, yes, we're fine," she answers. She knew her daughter looked like him, with his eyes, a freak twist of fate. These words do not stay him; he continues on towards them.

He grew closer to the woman and girl, and his breath caught as he got a good glance at the woman's face. The same liquid eyes, sunburn now gone from her cheeks, lank hair. _Chihiro..._

Her breath was shallow when he drew up to them. "Chihiro..." he spoke first, announcing himself.

"Kohaku...." She clears her throat, then places her hand on the girl's head. "This is my daughter, Amari." He knelt to look the girl in the eye, and found himself looking into eyes that mirrored his own. He knew it must be coincidence, and yet it shocked him, all the same.

"Kaa-san, his eyes look like mine....He looks like me!" Amari announced joyfully. "Are you my Tou-san?" she asked innocently. Chihiro's eyes grew very wide. A blush painted over her features. Haku shook his head. "No," he said, "I'm not. I'm just a friend." He ruffled her short hair and stood back up to face a Chihiro who was very red in the face.

"She doesn't remember her father," she explained. A raised eyebrow prompts her to elaborate.

She squinted at him, then said, "As you can probably tell, we're both dead." He nodded. This was the conclusion he drew when he first recognized her. "I died giving birth to her and her twin sister, and she died being born," she finished. "She never met her father."

He understood perfectly. The little girl had never known her real father, so when she came across a man whom she looked _just like_, especially a man her mother seemed to know, she assumed.

"Hey!" Amari tugged on Haku's hand. "Do you _wanna_ be my Tou-san? Since I don't have one?" Haku raised a silent eyebrow. "Um..."

His eyes met Chihiro's, and she shrugged, smiling slightly.

"Sure." He leaned own and swung Amari up into the air as she shrieked with joyful giggles. Chihiro laughed, and when next their eyes met, e pulled her into a hug.

xXx

"_I missed you, so much..."_

"_Me too."_

xXx

Parting Comments: Well, I don't really like the ending. It does not thrill me. Tell me what you thought!

Hugs and Kisses

Eden


End file.
